Method and apparatus for sharing an interrupt between disk drive interfaces

ABSTRACT

An apparatus for sharing an interrupt between a controller for a parallel storage device interface and a controller for a serial storage device interface includes interrupt conditioning circuitry that masks an interrupt signal coming from the parallel storage device interface if no storage device is coupled to the parallel storage device interface. The masking of the parallel storage device interface interrupt if no storage device is coupled to the parallel storage device interface allows the controller for the serial storage device interface to share the interrupt traditionally assigned to the parallel storage device interface.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention pertains to the field of computer systems. Moreparticularly, this invention pertains to the field of sharing interruptsbetween disk drive controllers.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Computer systems typically include one or more disk drive devices. Thesedrive devices are coupled to the system via controllers that aretypically embedded in the system chipset. Usually, two drive devices canbe supported by a single controller. Each of the drives coupled to thecontroller can signal an interrupt to the controller by causing aninterrupt line to become asserted. The two drives coupled to thecontroller share a single interrupt line. Once an interrupt has beensignaled, an interrupt handler routine running on a microprocessordetermines which of the drives asserted the interrupt line.

Many computer systems provide two drive controllers that provide supportfor a total of four drives. One interrupt is provided for each drivecontroller. Most computer systems set aside two interrupts for harddrive support. The software written for these systems anticipates thatonly these two interrupts will be assigned to hard drive controllers.

In an effort to improve system performance and to reduce system costs,new drive interface technologies are being developed. It is likely thatemerging drive interface technologies will need to co-exist with thecurrent drive controllers described above. A problem exists in that inorder for the newer technologies to co-exist with the current drivecontrollers, either additional interrupts will be required for the drivecontrollers or a technique for sharing the two available interrupts willbe required. In order to support the new technologies and to avoidchanging a large established base of software, it is more desirable toprovide circuitry for sharing interrupts between the newer and thecurrent drive controllers.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention will be understood more fully from the detaileddescription given below and from the accompanying drawings ofembodiments of the invention which, however, should not be taken tolimit the invention to the specific embodiments described, but are forexplanation and understanding only.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a computer system including a disk drivecontroller unit coupled to both a parallel disk drive interconnect and aserial disk drive interconnect.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a disk drive controllerunit including a parallel disk drive controller and a serial disk drivecontroller.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of one embodiment of an interrupt conditioninglogic unit.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an additional embodiment of an interruptconditioning logic unit.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of another embodiment of an interruptconditioning logic unit.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a further embodiment of an interruptconditioning logic unit.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of one embodiment of a method for sharing aninterrupt between two disk drive controllers.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

An apparatus for sharing an interrupt between a controller for aparallel storage device interface and a controller for a serial storagedevice interface includes interrupt conditioning circuitry that masks aninterrupt signal coming from the parallel storage device interface if nostorage device is coupled to the parallel storage device interface. Themasking of the parallel storage device interface interrupt if no storagedevice is coupled to the parallel storage device interface allows thecontroller for the serial storage device interface to share theinterrupt traditionally assigned to the parallel storage deviceinterface.

Although the embodiments that follow describe hard disk controllers andinterfaces, other embodiments are possible using controllers andinterfaces for other types of storage devices, including, but notlimited to, optical drives, tape drives, floppy disk drives, etc.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system 100 that includes a processor 110coupled to a system logic device 120. The system logic device 120 isfurther coupled to a graphics controller 130 and a system memory 140.The system logic device 120 is also coupled to a system input/output hub150. The system input/output hub 150 includes a drive controller unit200 that is discussed more fully below in connection with FIG. 2. Thedrive controller unit 200 is coupled to a disk drive 160 via a paralleldisk drive interconnect 165. The disk drive controller unit 200 is alsocoupled to a disk drive 170 via serial disk drive interconnect 175. Thedisk drive 160 is optional for this example embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram including the disk drive controller unit 200.The disk drive control unit 200 includes a parallel disk drivecontroller 210 and a serial disk drive controller 220. The serial diskdrive controller 220 is coupled to the disk drive 170 by way of a theserial disk drive interconnect 175 and a serial disk drive interface250. The parallel disk drive controller 210 is coupled to the disk drive160 by way of the parallel disk drive interconnect 165 and a paralleldisk drive interface 240. The parallel disk drive interconnect 165includes multiple address/data/control lines 166 and a parallel diskdrive interrupt signal 167. The parallel disk drive interrupt signal 167is pulled up to a logically high voltage level VCC through a resistor260 when the disk drive 160 is not driving the parallel disk driveinterrupt signal 167 to a logically low voltage level. If disk drive 160is not installed, then the parallel disk drive interrupt signal 167 ispulled up to VCC.

The disk drive controller unit 200 also includes an interruptconditioning logic unit (ICL) 230. The ICL 230 receives the paralleldisk drive interrupt signal 167 and an interrupt pending signal 221 fromthe serial disk drive controller 220. In this example embodiment, theserial disk drive interconnect 175 does not have a dedicated interruptline. Interrupts are communicated from the disk drive 170 to the serialdisk drive controller 220 by way of interrupt messages delivered overthe serial disk drive interconnect 175. When an interrupt message isreceived at the serial disk drive controller 220, the serial disk drivecontroller 220 asserts the interrupt pending signal 221.

The ICL 230 serves to block the parallel disk drive interrupt signal 167when the disk drive 160 is not installed. If the disk drive 160 isinstalled, then the parallel disk drive interrupt signal 167 is passedthrough to the parallel disk drive controller interrupt input 231. TheICL also passes the interrupt pending signal 221 through to the paralleldisk drive controller interrupt input 231. By blocking the parallel diskdrive interrupt signal 167 when no drive is coupled to the parallel diskdrive interface 240, the ICL 230 allows the serial disk drive controller220 to share the parallel disk drive controller interrupt input 231.

Without the ICL, interrupt sharing would only be possible when both thedisk drive 160 and 170 are installed. This is due to the parallel diskdrive interrupt signal 167 being pulled to an asserted state when nodrive is installed. Typical prior computer systems deal with theasserted disk drive interrupt signal when no drive is installed bymasking the interrupt at the system interrupt controller. When more thanone disk drive controllers share the interrupt, however, simply maskingthe interrupt at the system interrupt controller would make sharingimpossible.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of one embodiment of the ICL 230. The ICL 230includes an AND gate 233, an OR gate 234, and a mask register 232. Whenthe computer system 100 is first started, the system basic input/outputsystem (BIOS), which is a software agent running on the processor 110,polls the disk drive interfaces to determine which disk drives areinstalled.

Although the current embodiment describes the BIOS polling the diskdrive interfaces to determine which disk drives are installed, otherembodiments are possible where a state machine implemented in hardwareconducts the polling operations without software intervention.

If no drive is found to be coupled to the parallel disk drive interface240, then the BIOS writes a “1” to the mask register 232. The value ofthe mask register is inverted and delivered to one input of the AND gate233. The other input of the AND gate 233 receives the parallel diskdrive interrupt signal 167. When the mask register 232 contains a “1”,the output of the AND gate 233 will always show a “0”, thereby maskingthe parallel disk drive interrupt 167. When the mask register 232contains a “0”, then whatever value is delivered to the AND gate 233 bythe parallel disk drive interrupt signal 167 is passed through to the ORgate 234. Therefore, the ICL 230 will always pass the interrupt pendingsignal 221 to the parallel disk drive controller interrupt input 231 andwill pass the parallel disk drive interrupt signal 167 to the paralleldisk drive controller interrupt input 231 only when the BIOS hasdetected that a drive is coupled to the parallel disk drive interface240 and the mask register 232 is not set.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of another embodiment of an ICL unit. Thisexample embodiment may be used interchangeably with the embodimentdiscussed above in connection with FIG. 3. The ICL 400 of FIG. 4 isbased around an eight bit decoder 410. The decoder 410 receives at itsinput C the interrupt pending signal 221 from the serial disk drivecontroller 220. The B input receives the parallel disk drive interruptsignal 167. The A input receives the inverted output of a flip-flop 430.If the BIOS fails to detect a disk drive coupled to the parallel diskdrive interface 240, then a “1” is delivered to the flip-flop 430 viathe mask signal 431. The write signal 432 is used to clock in the valuedelivered over the mask signal 431.

If no drive is detected on the parallel disk drive interface, then the Ainput of the decoder 410 will receive a “0” from the flip-flop 430. Whenthe A input receives a “0” and the parallel disk drive interrupt 167 isasserted, none of the decoder outputs coupled to the OR gate 420 willbecome asserted. Therefore, the parallel disk drive interrupt 167 ismasked. Whenever the interrupt pending signal 221 is asserted, one ofthe decoder outputs coupled to the OR gate 420 is guaranteed to becomeasserted. In this manner, the interrupt pending signal 221 from theserial disk drive controller 220 is always passed through to theparallel disk drive controller interrupt input 231 and the parallel diskdrive interrupt 167 is passed on to the parallel disk drive controllerinterrupt input only if the BIOS has detected the presence of a diskdrive on the parallel disk drive interface 240.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an additional embodiment of an ICL unit.The ICL 500 of FIG. 5 is based around a dynamic random access memorylook-up table (LUT) 510. The LUT 510 includes a write port 512 that isaccessible to the processor 110 via a CPU access path 515. The BIOS cancause appropriate values to be written into the LUT 510 where the valuesare based on whether or not the BIOS has detected a disk drive coupledto the parallel disk drive interface 240. The values stored in the LUT510 are accessed via the address inputs A1 and A0. The A1 and A0 inputsare coupled to the parallel disk drive interrupt signal 167 and theinterrupt pending signal 221, respectively. The value placed onto theoutput 513 depends on the states of the A1 and A0 inputs. By programmingthe LUT 510 with appropriate values, the LUT 510 can prevent theparallel disk drive interrupt signal 167 from being passed on to theparallel disk drive controller interrupt input 231 unless a disk drivehas been detected on the parallel disk drive interface 240. Further, theLUT 510 will allow the interrupt pending signal 221 to always be passedon to the parallel disk drive controller interrupt input 231.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a further embodiment of an ICL based on aread-only memory (ROM) 610. The ICL 600 includes the ROM 610 and aflip-flop 630. The ICL 600 of FIG. 6 works in largely the same fashionas the LUT-based embodiment of FIG. 5. However, since the ROM 610 mustbe programmed prior to system operation and because the BIOS cannotchange the values of the ROM 610, the flip-flop 630 is used tomanipulate the values presented to the address inputs of the ROM 610 inorder to access different storage locations depending on whether or notthe BIOS has detected a disk drive coupled to the parallel disk driveinterface 240. If no disk drive is detected, then the BIOS delivers a“1” to the mask 631 input to the flip-flop 630. The “1” is clocked intothe flip-flop 630 via the write signal 632. The output of the flip-flop630 is delivered to an address input of the ROM 610 along with theinterrupt pending signal 221 and the parallel disk drive interruptsignal 167. The appropriate data is driven from the output 612 of theROM 610 to the parallel disk drive controller interrupt input 231.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of one embodiment of a method for sharing aninterrupt between two disk drive controllers. At block 710, adetermination is made as to whether a disk drive is couple to a firstdisk drive interface. If a disk drive is detected, then at block 730 afirst interrupt is delivered from the first disk drive interface tofirst disk drive controller interrupt input. If a drive is not detectedat block 710, then at block 720 a mask bit is set. At block 740 thefirst interrupt is prevented from being delivered from the first diskdrive interface to the first disk controller interrupt input. Lastly, atblock 750, a second interrupt is delivered from a second disk drivecontroller to the first disk drive controller interrupt input.

In the foregoing specification the invention has been described withreference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. It will, however,be evident that various modifications and changes may be made theretowithout departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention asset forth in the appended claims. The specification and drawings are,accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than in arestrictive sense.

Reference in the specification to “an embodiment,” “one embodiment,”“some embodiments,” or “other embodiments” means that a particularfeature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with theembodiments is included in at least some embodiments, but notnecessarily all embodiments, of the invention. The various appearancesof “an embodiment,” “one embodiment,” or “some embodiments” are notnecessarily all referring to the same embodiments.

What is claimed is:
 1. An apparatus, comprising: a first storage device interface; a second storage device interface; a first disk drive controller coupled to the first storage device interface, the first disk drive controller including an interrupt signal input; a second controller coupled to the second storage device interface; and an interrupt conditioning unit to receive a first interrupt signal from the first storage device interface and to receive a second interrupt signal from the second controller, the interrupt conditioning unit to deliver the second interrupt signal to the first disk drive controller interrupt signal input, the interrupt conditioning unit further to deliver the first interrupt signal tote first disk drive controller interrupt signal input if a storage device is coupled to the first storage device interface, the interrupt conditioning unit to not deliver the first interrupt signal to the first disk drive controller interrupt signal input if no disk drive is coupled to the first storage device interface.
 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the interrupt conditioning unit includes an AND gate and an OR gate, the AND gate having a first input coupled to the first interrupt signal and the AND gate having a second input coupled to a mask register, the mask register to store a value indicating whether or not a storage device is coupled to the first storage device interface, a first input of the OR gate coupled to an output of the AND gate and a second input of the OR gate coupled to the second interrupt signal, an output of the OR gate coupled to the first disk drive controller interrupt signal input.
 3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein a value indicated by the mask register is inverted prior to delivery to the second input of the AND gate.
 4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first storage device interface is a parallel interface.
 5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the second storage device interface is a serial interface.
 6. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein the second controller asserts the second interrupt signal in response to an interrupt message being received from the serial interface.
 7. A method, comprising: determining whether a storage device is coupled to a first storage device interface; setting a mask bit if no storage device is coupled to the first storage device interface; delivering a first interrupt from the first storage device interface to a first disk drive controller interrupt input if the mask bit is not set; preventing the first interrupt from being delivered from the first storage device interface to the first disk drive controller interrupt input if the mask bit is set; and delivering a second interrupt from a second controller to the first disk drive controller interrupt input.
 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising delivering an interrupt message from a second storage device interface to the second controller.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein delivering an interrupt message from a second storage device interface to the second controller includes delivering an interrupt message from a serial interface to the second controller.
 10. A system, comprising: a processor; and a system logic device coupled to the processor, the system logic device including a first storage device interface, a second storage device interface coupled to a second storage device, a first disk drive controller coupled to the first storage device interface, the first disk drive controller including an interrupt signal input, a second controller coupled to the second storage device interface, and an interrupt conditioning unit to receive a first interrupt signal from the first storage device interface and to receive a second interrupt signal from the second controller, the interrupt conditioning unit to deliver the second interrupt signal to the first disk drive controller interrupt signal input, the interrupt conditioning unit further to deliver the first interrupt signal to the first disk drive controller interrupt signal input if a first storage device is coupled to the first storage device interface, the interrupt conditioning unit to not deliver the first interrupt signal to the first disk drive controller interrupt signal input if no storage device is coupled to the first storage device interface.
 11. The system of claim 10, wherein the interrupt conditioning unit includes an AND gate and an OR, gate, the AND gate having a first input coupled to the first interrupt signal and the AND gate having a second input coupled to a mask register, the mask register to store a value indicating whether or not a storage device is coupled to the first storage device interface, a first input of the OR gate coupled to an output of the AND gate and a second input of the OR gate coupled to the second interrupt signal, an output of the OR gate coupled to the first disk drive controller interrupt signal input.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein a value indicated by the mask register is inverted prior to delivery to the second input of the AND gate.
 13. The system of claim 10, wherein the first storage device interface is a parallel interface.
 14. The system of claim 13, wherein the second storage device interface is a serial interface.
 15. The system of claim 14, wherein the second controller asserts the second interrupt signal in response to an interrupt message being received from the serial interface. 